Crossing the Nullabor

Tuesday 12 March 2013 - Thursday 14 March 2013

We took the scenic dirt track along the cliff tops of the Great Australian Bight where we drove quite close to the edge and encountered some great views. 

As we had heard that it was hard to come across water on the Nullabor we did our research on how hard it really was.  After coming to the conclusion that water was like gold we carried extra with us for such things as a showers and dish washing.  We were actually quite suprised to find that water was freely available in big tanks at various rest stops and I was even able to do some very overdue clothes washing.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped at the Nullabor road house for lunch and afterwards we threw out our remaining fresh fruit and vegetables, as we would be crossing the border to Western Australia that same day.  We got through the border check point in about 10 minutes, although we did had to hand in our honey which Kai was quite devastated by.  We headed Eucla Roadhouse and had a coffee and hot chips while we waited for the Rippons to join us. We camped in Eucla behind the sand dunes and that night it was extremely windy and cold so Craig and I put the kids to bed and watched Charlie and Boots in the car with our cheese, bikkies and beer.   That was my extremely healthy dinner that night.

The next day we made our way to Cocklebiddy Caves which is an underground cave more than 6 km long, of which around 90% is underwater and only accessible via cave diving.  The kids went down and had a look at the entrance but that is about as far as they could venture into it.

 

 

Cocklebiddy Caves

 

 

We drove along the longest, straightest stretch of road in Australia which is 145.6 kms long and the Rippons joked over the CB that they were having a great time playing 'Corners".  As we are travelling slowely in order to try and conserve petrol we even got overtaken by a Road Train.

 

 

Our next rest stop was really just a patch of dirt but the kids turned it into a sporting ground by setting up the street tennis, cricket pitch and playing with the frisbee and skipping ropes.  We were also able to have a proper camp fire after all the fire bans we had encountered, which we were all very greatful for.